Is it considered to be "gaming Digg" to email a small group of friends and ask them to vote up or down a submission? As it has been pointed out many times since yesterday, is this not exaclty what Digg asked for when they did away with the shout feature? Is this not the very same thing that other users do every single day on Twitter, Facebook and via other means? It seems more than anything, that Novenator and the others behind this attack are trampling our civil rights and attempting to deny us the right to assemble and the right to free speech because our views do not agree with his. If the group were assembled in a single room and discussed digging, burying and various user actitivities, would it still be a violation of Digg ToS. If it were done via phone, would that also be a Digg violation? If it's done at a location that has nothing to do with Digg, why would Digg care or intervene? According to those on the Social Blade show last night, it is apparently common knowledge that other "bury brigades" exist and have existed. If Digg has the ability to investigate the Digg Patriots group for these alleged violations, there is little doubt that they can investigate others on Digg for the same, but as I and apparently many others agree, no one in the Digg Patriots group did anything wrong, except piss off a few very liberal, sensitive Digg users who are exacting their revenge. It's really quite sad and pathetic that someone would go to such extreme lengths to attack this group due to political differences. One thing is for certain, this is controversial, and controversy creates interest, which leads to press and much more exposure for Digg, and business is good at Digg.

Many Digg users in the Digg Patriots group are very successful "Diggers" who are loyal to Digg and have generated tremendous traffic for the site. Our group has constantly reported bad behavior, SPAM submissions and comments and other violations of Digg rules. Digg Patriots is nothing more than a small group of ordinary people who came together because we all connected on Digg and had common interests. Our group welcomed people of any race, gender, age, nationality, religion or sexual preference, and the group was comprised of exactly that. The common thread was conservatism or libertarianism. At any given time, there were probably never more than 10 active members. Most people listed as members rarely if ever had any involvement or participation in any way.

If Digg is so skewed to the left, why stay if our views conflicted with the majority? It would have been much easier to simply leave such a hostile environment, but we all enjoy Digg and its' members. Many of us even have quite a few friends on Digg with opposing political views; Many of whom we have civilized discussions and debates with. There are however others, such as those who wish to attack us, for which there is never common ground and rarely if ever civil debate.

It is for that reason, we have been targeted and violated. This is no Watergate scandal. This is much ado about nothing. This amounts to nothing more than a silly confrontation of people with vastly different political views, taken completely out of context and blown way out of proportion. As is the case with most controversy on Digg, mob rules and sheep follow, which accounts for the incredible number of diggs and comments the original submissions received. What amazes me more is that this insignificant story has received so much attention, yet the JournOlist story that was uncovered recently and proved there was a concerted effort by the media to show favoritism to Obama during the presidential campaign, never saw the light of day. I wonder who was responsible for censoring those stories from Digg?

Onward.

This response was submitted by an anonymous contributor. -Editor

In response to the article published yesterday regarding the Digg Patriots group, the Digg Patriots user group has been accused of censoring liberal stories and gaming Digg. Is it not odd that with all that alleged censoring, the front page of Digg is and has always been dominated by liberal news, from liberal sites, submitted by liberal Digg users. A group of conservatives and libertarians came together in a Yahoo group roughly a year and a half ago to keep in touch with each other and share Digg submissions, comments, opinions and fellowship after Digg removed the shout system which allowed much of the same within the site itself.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that since Digg added the Political News and Political Opinion categories to the site, the membership is decidedly Democratic. The addition of these categories prior to the 2008 election completely changed the tone of Digg forever. No longer was Digg known as a tech site. The front page would soon be populated with story after story bashing Republican and Conservative politicians or pundits and submissions glorifying left-leaning politicians. Conservatives had no chance of being heard, much less getting Conservative submissions to the front page of Digg. Those submissions were systematically buried in the same fashion in which the Digg Patriots group is being accused. Comments made by right-leaning members under liberal or progressive submissions were buried into oblivion.

In very popular stories regarding Democrats, comments made by Conservatives were buried into double and even triple digit negative numbers.

Not only is the general membership of Digg overwhelming left-leaning, but the site administrators often make decisions that seem to favor Liberals over Conservatives. Most users are certainly going to come down on one side of the aisle at some point. Our group did not exist to stifle all left-leaning content on Digg and accusing the group of censorship is hardly justified.

A quick look at all the top political news and opinion stories over the last year and half proves how inacurrate that claim is. Looking through the first 10 pages of submissions that became popular under the Political News category over that last year, there is only 1 submission out of the 150 that has a conservative bias, which is the news story about Scott Brown winning his Senate race.

On any given day on Digg, left-based submissions made popular outnumber right-based submissions easily by a factor of 20:1. And look at the content of those popular left-leaning submissions.

How many are attacks on Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, etc? If we were truly censoring submissions, we did a pretty crappy job of it.

In addition, most conservative comments are met with replies that are nothing more than childish personal attacks. Though not all, most liberals commenting on Digg are more likely to label a conservative with one of their many catchy tags such as "freeper", "birther", "racist" or simply make vulgar or obscene insults. There is no debating or arguing with such behavior. How many of you reading this right now are guilty of making such comments or voting up those comments? How many times have we seen the Glenn Beck rape meme posted? What value does that add to Digg?

Did we vote down left-leaning stories or vote up conservative submissions? Yes. However, that vote up or down was still a personal choice of each individual user and done with only a single vote up or down. No one ever used any form of scripts or any other aid to promote or bury a story on Digg, unlike several power users who were previously banned for exactly that reason.

In fact, what we have been doing is hardly different than anyone else using any other form of communication to promote a submission or even attempt to bury it. Groups of Digg users exist on Twitter or Twitter-clones, Facebook and many other social media sites that do the exact same thing. Anyone on Digg who has ever asked anyone else to digg or bury a story at any time in the past is just as guilty or innocent as anyone in Digg Patriots. We received nothing for this, other than personal satisfaction.

If you look at submissions of left-leaning Digg users it is a daily occurence for the same story to be submitted ad nauseum. With hot stories, it's not unusual to see the exact same story or slight variations submitted dozens of times in the same day. Even the story about Digg Patriots has been submitted no less than a dozen times in the last 24 hours, 3 alone are exact duplicates from DailyKos. Without a doubt, this is one of our biggest issues with Liberal Digg submissions.

No one was trying to censor actual news or even opinions, but we certainly targeted submissions that were known or obvious duplicates or pieces that we deemed were inacurrate or were from sources that had questionable credibility. We also have pointed out to Digg admins numerous sites that are regularly submitted seeking donations or who copy content from other sites.

I personally find it ironic that so many Democratic and Liberal Digg users are so quick to judge and condemn this group, as these are typically the same people who are the first to go into fits of rage regarding due process. In addition, I also find it ironic that these same Digg users calling for our heads have yet to condemn the invasion of privacy, possibly criminal in nature used to access our personal and private emails, which is how 95% of this information was exchanged between Digg Patriot users. These are the same Digg users who were frothing at the mouth in response to the passing of The Patriot Act under the Bush administration and who have had little criticism of Obama for not only voting for the Patriot Act as a Senator, but continuing the policies under his presidency.

As individuals, we have an expectation of privacy to exchange correspondence, thoughts, concerns, or simple greetings with our friends. It now appears as though our privacy was breeched days, weeks, maybe even months ago. It has even come to our attention that attempts were allegedly made by the author of the piece and his hit squad to goad DP members into confrontations in order to elicit certain responses. How would you feel to find out that someone was spying on you with the intent to collect and distibute your personal correspondence at their discretion for their own personal gain?

Most if not all Digg users have certainly been aware of the constant attacks made on various Conservative/Libertarian Digg users lately, namely Capt Carrot and ThePartyStar, both who were on the Digg Patriots member list. The attacks on ThePartyStar are the most vile and hateful of any I have witnessed on the internet. For nearly two months we have seen new accounts created where the user friends many of the same Digg users, most on the Digg Patriots list and then launches a series of personal, profane and sexual-assault based attacks on Digg user ThePartyStar. This has happened several dozen times in the last few weeks and only seems to have subsided now that Digg has closed new membership. Since it was mentioned in the article about our group that we were allegedly targeting these people who were creating these accounts and attacking ThePartyStar, a group we labeled as the NoBros, it seems odd that the author of this piece is essentially siding with those attackers. It leads me to suspect someone associated with the author is perhaps behind those attacks. The comments made toward ThePartyStar were graphic and heinous. I cannot imagine anyone attempting to defend those who perpetrated these acts.

In regards to the continuing attacks on Digg user Capt Carrot (RJ Carter), this seems to be related to an ongoing issue he has dealt with personally for years in which he is attempting to uncover and confront child predators and pedophiles on the internet. This is apparently something that Mr. Carter was involved with long before his affiliation with our group and none of us had any dealing with the matter. Based only on what RJ has told us, the people he is confronting will stoop to the lowest levels and stop at nothing in their attempt to discredit him and paint him as the wrongdoer. It would not surprise me to find out that those attacking Mr. Carter also had a hand in illegally obtaining access to our personal information.

So who is behind the attack on the Digg Patriot group? The author of the piece on Alternet and also a duplicate submission on pubrecord.org is none other than Digg user Novenator who goes by the pen name OleOle Olson. Mr. Olson is a writer/contributor/co-owner of the site NewsJunkiePost.com Mr. Olson chose to attack us and single us out as our members often confronted and debated with him.

I doubt that anyone is shocked by this revelation as there is possibly no one on Digg who is more of a progressive advocate or radical. His submissions are almost always divisive, political opinion pieces. Apparently Mr. Olson took exception to us continually pointing out his hypocrisy on Digg as he often commented about reporting conservatives for "hijacking" submissions by editorializing the title or description, as he was either guilty of exactly the same thing or had a history of digging liberal or progressive articles in which the submitter had also done the same thing. In addition, as he had attacked various users who had submitted articles or sites that requested donations, we found that his site, newsjunkiepost was also guilty of the same thing that he claimed was a violation of Digg ToS policies.

We also believe Digg user Anamoly100 to have a hand in these attacks as the site she runs and regularly submits from, freakoutnation.com, is also guilty of these alleged Digg ToS violations, not to mention consistently submitting, digging and promoting known duplicates her site published in order to generate web traffic. It doesn't take much to deduce that these people are not only writing and submitting pieces from their own site in order to promote their personal and political agendas, they are doing it for profit, another violation of Digg's policies that we have continued to point out.

So as you see, the Digg Patriot group, in an effort to help Digg police their own policies, we are now being singled out and attacked because Mr. Olson may be financially taking a hit due to lost ad revenue on his site. This has less to do with censorship, than it does with his personal vendetta against Digg Patriots for constantly admonishing his less than ethical behavior. Novenator is guilty of exactly the same things he has accused the Digg Patriots of, which is organized digging and burying. I'm certain that the Digg administrators and many Digg users are also aware of his behavior which is why he is not being taken seriously.

During last nights show on Social Blade, Digg user MrBabyMan mentioned that Novenator had approached him in the past to submit this hit piece, but he refused to do so due to the lack of credibility and believability of the submission and the author. This obviously took courage and understanding on the part of MrBabyMan as the article published an alleged list in which he was mentioned as a Digg power user whose politics at times seemed to favor the Democrats based solely on his submissions made prior to the 2008 election. I would like to offer an apology to Andy (aka MrBabyMan) that he was involved in this in any way. I hope Andy understands that many of us on the Digg Patriots list are either mutual friends with him on Digg and/or regularly Digg and promote his submissions. There is no one else in all of social media with as much savvy and who has enjoyed as much success as MrBabyMan. Did I personally bury submissions from MrBabyMan that I didn't agree with politically? Absolutely. That's why Digg has a bury feature. I would expect him and any of those who disagreed with my politics to do the same with any of my submissions or comments, which I am certain happens frequently. That does not take away from the fact that even though his name was mentioned as a Digg power user with tendencies to submit articles partial to Democrats, many on the DP list are loyal to MrBabyMan as this screenshot shows.

Is it considered to be "gaming Digg" to email a small group of friends and ask them to vote up or down a submission? As it has been pointed out many times since yesterday, is this not exaclty what Digg asked for when they did away with the shout feature? Is this not the very same thing that other users do every single day on Twitter, Facebook and via other means? It seems more than anything, that Novenator and the others behind this attack are trampling our civil rights and attempting to deny us the right to assemble and the right to free speech because our views do not agree with his. If the group were assembled in a single room and discussed digging, burying and various user actitivities, would it still be a violation of Digg ToS. If it were done via phone, would that also be a Digg violation? If it's done at a location that has nothing to do with Digg, why would Digg care or intervene? According to those on the Social Blade show last night, it is apparently common knowledge that other "bury brigades" exist and have existed. If Digg has the ability to investigate the Digg Patriots group for these alleged violations, there is little doubt that they can investigate others on Digg for the same, but as I and apparently many others agree, no one in the Digg Patriots group did anything wrong, except piss off a few very liberal, sensitive Digg users who are exacting their revenge. It's really quite sad and pathetic that someone would go to such extreme lengths to attack this group due to political differences. One thing is for certain, this is controversial, and controversy creates interest, which leads to press and much more exposure for Digg, and business is good at Digg.

Many Digg users in the Digg Patriots group are very successful "Diggers" who are loyal to Digg and have generated tremendous traffic for the site. Our group has constantly reported bad behavior, SPAM submissions and comments and other violations of Digg rules. Digg Patriots is nothing more than a small group of ordinary people who came together because we all connected on Digg and had common interests. Our group welcomed people of any race, gender, age, nationality, religion or sexual preference, and the group was comprised of exactly that. The common thread was conservatism or libertarianism. At any given time, there were probably never more than 10 active members. Most people listed as members rarely if ever had any involvement or participation in any way.

If Digg is so skewed to the left, why stay if our views conflicted with the majority? It would have been much easier to simply leave such a hostile environment, but we all enjoy Digg and its' members. Many of us even have quite a few friends on Digg with opposing political views; Many of whom we have civilized discussions and debates with. There are however others, such as those who wish to attack us, for which there is never common ground and rarely if ever civil debate.

It is for that reason, we have been targeted and violated. This is no Watergate scandal. This is much ado about nothing. This amounts to nothing more than a silly confrontation of people with vastly different political views, taken completely out of context and blown way out of proportion. As is the case with most controversy on Digg, mob rules and sheep follow, which accounts for the incredible number of diggs and comments the original submissions received. What amazes me more is that this insignificant story has received so much attention, yet the JournOlist story that was uncovered recently and proved there was a concerted effort by the media to show favoritism to Obama during the presidential campaign, never saw the light of day. I wonder who was responsible for censoring those stories from Digg?

35 comments:

Excellent post on this whole sordid scandal! I hope that Novenator realizes that he is actually destroying Digg for his own personal gain and glory and that he has violated several laws in the process.

Can you imagine the outrage and hysteria had a conservative nefariously infiltrated a lefty site or group in such a manner and exposed something similar or worse? The story and headline would probably have gone something like this, "EXPOSED-Republitard Terrorist Hacker Caught Breaking Into Progressive Personal Emails".

It is unfathomable that this OleOleOlson character has not been removed from Digg and is not under criminal investigation for a laundry list of internet and privacy related activities. And to hide under the shroud of journalism is laughable and a slap in the face of every real journalist who puts their asses on the line for real news. The people who support Mr. Olsons actions are likely the same types who saw nothing wrong with the journalists who were exposed for blocking negative press about Sen. Obama prior to the presidential election. Where is the outrage on the left regarding that story? These are the actual news providers who committed a conspiracy to keep the voters in the dark. And yet I'm sure they took exception every time Fox News or anyone else on the right pointed out an Obama flaw, most likely through playing the race card. I never cared much about the birth certificate flap surrounding Obama, but if there was a deliberate effort to cover up information about the man, perhaps every file needs to be reopened and investigated.

And now I see that Mr. Olson perpetrated the very thing that he is accusing this group of judging by all the screenshots I've seen where he organized "bury brigades" of his own. How about that Mr. Olson? It appears that you started the practice of burying the right long before they ever had the idea. And to his supporters attempting to dismiss that evidence due to the fact that it is 1 1/2 years old, what difference does that make? He used screenshots in his article that were from posts about that old. You pathetic hypocrites never seem to have a problem dragging up ancient garbage about Republicans and smearing them with it. How many of you still bash Rush Limbaugh for his prescription drug problem, or Glenn Beck for his battle with alcoholism, or worse yet, just make up some ridiculous lie about Mr. Beck. Or shall we look at the countless piles of submissions made regarding Sarah Palins' past? I suppose history is only relevant when it favors progressives. You and your followers are not even worthy of being called liberals. Progressives soil the good name of true liberals. True liberals would not sink to such depravity and acts of cowardice.

Why don't you let someone have access to all of your personal correspondence with your friends and see if they can stand up to the same litmus test you use to judge your enemies. I would venture to guess that you have some fairly nasty skeletons hiding in your closet, as do many of your friends.

You are no Bob Woodward Mr. Olson. Sideshow Bob is probably a more accurate description; a cartoon character focused on one single purpose, destroy my enemy at any cost because they exposed my crimes. I hope the feds are on their way to your home now to seize your computer and throw your ass in jail. From what I hear though, it wouldn't be the first time you've been to prison. Ole' Ole'.

Too bad you didn't mention how easy it is for Conservatives to get banned from digg, yet the liberal commenters get away scott-free or their comment is merely deleted for doing the very same things.

Or how about that one submitter who was banned because a story he submitted was a scientific report from Russia about gays? Being seemingly "anti-gay" he was summarily banned. The extreme liberal bias is not only with the people commenting there, it's with digg.com itself.

This is a joke, right? The entirety of Digg is nothing but mass voting and "burying" done 24 hours a day by left-leaning activists. It's been that way for years. The conservative Digg-ers are outnumbered by mass-voting leftist Digg-ers by at least 20-to-1.

I think Yobie and Alternet are just upset that one single conservative group figured out how to do what hundreds of liberal groups do all the time. Cry me a river.

Furthermore, Digg is just yet another random Web site. It's not a public utility. If Digg wants to ban users of any type, then let them. Instead, libs prefer to whine in public that they're being "censored." Ha! Just try going on to any of thousands of leftist-run social sites and attempt to leave ONE comment from a conservative viewpoint. You'll be banned in 2 seconds flat.

If anybody's trying to enforce groupthink, it's the left who can't tolerate the existence of dissenting voices.

Digg Parrots got their asses handed to them. Now your spamming your own site's comments with "Anonymous said.." to make it look like people really care about the DP. What a bunch of cowards. You people are sad excuses for humans much less Americans. The world is changing and you people are afraid to move forward. Personally I hope the feds get involved and slam your dicks in the dirt, strip you of internet use and label you as the terrorists you are. If the right actually reported real news and not propaganda from WND, you guys would be more widely excepted.

What a bunch of f**king inbred morons you all are. You all would be laughable if you weren't so sad.

In response to those on the left who are attacking the so called DP group, and other conservatives at digg. Isn't it nice that your comments are published on this blog, and that they being allowed to be read by the general public?

It is ironic that you all have much more of a chance to have your comments read on this blog, than conservatives are given over at digg.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not faulting the digg staff. I do fault the intolerant left.

Let me remind you, you're comments are always welcome here, and will not be deleted. Providing, of course, that your comments are respectful of the decorum of this blog.

You shitholes got caught in a major censoring operation and now you play the victim role. Your BS doesn't work on me or anyone at Digg. Just bend over and take whats coming to you all as stand up people. I have gone up against Randy and Attila on Digg and had my comments removes and had my account wrongly canceled for the simple reason that they don't like getting stomped by facts and they didn't want people to see they are not as smart as those who actually read a wide breadth of news and insight from all over the world. Not just a thin swath of sites that tell you what you want to hear to make you feel warm and fuzzy.

@GustavoFuck you Fascist and whatever you think Stalinism is because you are wrong. I go by the rule of Eye for an Eye. DP got bust breaking the rules on Digg and "possibly" some federal laws. They wanted to censor the majority from reading what ever they wanted to read and silence viewpoint, thereby DP should be silenced. I would say that is fair.

Very good read. I think it is the other way round. The libs,progressives bury the conservatives.It is their final way to silence conservatism. It is low to accuse others, when Novenator's shouts calls for buries.He is such a hypocrite.Digg is mostly liberal but the progressives become like rabid dogs when they are challenged. You obviously hit a nerve. Keep up the good work all conservatives.

I will delete any of your further comments, not for content, but for being uncivil and crude on my blog. Don't come into my house to take a leak on my living room floor. If you want to have your say, then be my guest. If you are here to try to get your comments banned for using bad manners and cussing everyone out, then your comment will be banned.

Keep in mind, I am keeping all the screen shots of this comment section. So, when you claim you were censored, I will produce the screen shots to show you abused my comment section against my request, that you refused to act in as civil manner.

Oh, and by the way...

What is with all running back to digg telling all your little friends how you let us have it here at the RattPo? It is quite puerile behavior.

So funny. "Progressives" are just upset because they thought they had cornered the market on Digg "hacking". By the way, since when is community organizing, digital or otherwise, called "hacking"? I'll tell you when. When progressive want to frame the discussion. When progressives organize in the real world it's called "grass roots". When conservatives organize in the real world its called "astro turf". When progressives swarm and organize on Digg its call organization and activism. When conservatives organize on Digg it's called "hacking", or the classier "right wing circle jerk". This isn't a new tactic.

Well written response. I'll keep tabs on you guys and hope that you stick around on Digg in some form. I only stick around because of the like minded friends I have found, and continue to try to encourage the 'diggerals' -and- my conservative buddies to try to be more open minded to opposing viewpoints.

"...One day conservatives may actually embody the virtue they demand of others and stop acting with preemptive amorality to stave off an imaginary victim-hood. I have hope for them..."

And...

Will you and your ilk aspire to the same standard that you demand of those on the right? Or, is that too much of a reach for you and your ilk? After all, the left only aspires towards excellence in mediocrity. Anything else for you is merely a pipe dream.

What's really maddening about the soldiers for the right wing is that they really don't want to debate their stances, they just like to repeat them with a few canards that they've been given to support them. Once the discussion gets to the point of illustrating the the canards are just that, it doesn't go any farther. They don't present more data or facts, nor do they admit the accuracy of any other facts that don't conform to their stance. It's like trying to have a discussion with a tape recorder. It becomes clear that their purpose in engaging is not to examine their own beliefs or even test them against others beliefs, but rather to repeat the talking points they've gleaned from the sanctioned right wing outlets in order to let the rest of us in on the gospel. It explains why there is such an overlap with fundies; the blind acceptance of received wisdom coupled with the strong admonition to not consider the alternative fits with both systems of belief.

I think what everyone is overlooking is that the liberals control the content on digg to this day despite what some group may or may not have done. For the record I am not a member of DP.Here are the top 100 sources for digg front page stories for the last year. All you have to do is look at this list and see that the majority of items on digg are slated toward the liberal left.

Remember when you were at school? Primary school? Probably not, it might have been a while ago, and you've probably been through a lot since then. But that was the time you were developing most. That was the time of your life when you were learning language, when you were (hopefully) mixing with people from different class backgrounds, racial backgrounds, religious backgrounds. Wealth didn't matter. You shared toys with your friends. You ate well, you drank well, you were creative and ingenious, you were taught to be tolerant, you were taught to be a team player, you were taught not to fight and you were taught to be kind to one another.

Which of the above are you now? How have you 'moved forward'? How has someone like Russ Limbaugh moved forward? He advocates sectarianism. He only trusts those with wealth. He probably can't speak a second language fluently.

I'm picking on someone who's a figurehead for a right wing agenda, but who can honestly say that they've really moved forward, regardless of their views now? Why can't we all just get along?

Anytime conservatives get a voice in the media, the liberals whine like a bunch of crybabys. Digg is overwhelmingly liberal. 90% of the political subs on digg are hit pieces on Palin, Cheney, Limbaugh, Beck etc. Kudos to the Digg Patriots for finding a way to express their views.

Pursuant to Title 17 U.S.C. 107, other copyrighted work is provided for educational purposes, research, critical comment, or debate without profit or payment. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for your own purposes beyond the 'fair use' exception, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.